Living on a farm is all about seasons especially when you want to make the most of the fertile soils of the North West Coast of Tasmania. This blog is a diary of growing, harvesting and preserving the produce of those soils just as I have been doing for the past 30 years. Come with me on my journey through the seasons. Maybe you will be inspired to grow and preserve your own too.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Last weekend, I found myself browsing in on of the second hand shops in town and came across a Cuisinart ice cream maker for $35. Seemed too good to pass up when I worked out that I would only need to make about 4 litres of gourmet ice cream to cover the cost. After that all my ice cream would be "free" if I tried to use ingredients I have to hand. With several thousand litres of milk being produced per day here, my primary ingredient was right at my door!

Eager to try it out, I decided on using up some of the last of this year's crop of kiwi fruit and make a sorbet. This was just a combination of sugar syrup and blended Kiwifruit. Into the prefrozen bowl ( it is an insulated bowl with some sort of liquid in between the inner and outer layers...maybe salt water) and on went the maker.

30 minutes later and here is the result.

The finished product was soft enough to spoon even a few days later. This is quite different from ice cream I have made years ago where you had to melt it in the microwave to be able to get any out of the container! After several days of warm summery weather, it has turned back to winter now, temporarily I hope, so not exactly sorbet eating temperatures.

Experiment number two on the weekend was to make a frozen yoghurt to see if that could be a palatable low fat substitute for traditional ice cream which uses cream. A cup of milk with some choc bits blended, added to two cups of yoghurt and here is the result.

Again, it is still soft enough to spoon after being in the freezer a few days. It is quite chocolatey, has the slight tang of yoghurt and melts quite quickly but not bad at all. I am looking forward to doing a bit of experimenting with flavours in the next few months now. Occasionally I might treat ourselves to a cream version ice cream too.

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About Me

I live on a dairy farm in Flowerdale on the North West coast of Tasmania where I have a large vegetable and fruit garden. For many years I have been harvesting and preserving the produce of my garden to enjoy all year round. I'm always looking for new ideas from around the world to experiment with, as well as the tried and true standards.